The past month has been a whirlwind. Up in the air, whirling around, feet not on the ground, and not entirely sure what’s going to happen next, basically sums it all up. It always comes down to several defining events, situations, or people that just make life extra mind-blowing. You would think that after all of this time in South America that I would be used to the feeling of the unexpected or being caught completely off guard. But, alas, some stuff still makes my jaw drop, my head shake in disbelief, or it leaves me saying “how did I get into this?”
At the beginning of January, I left my palace bachelor apartment for the ghetto. Not quite literally the ghetto, of course, but a really sketchy area of the city. You know it’s bad when even the locals are like “why the fuck would you ever want to live there?” In the area called Once, it’s very multi-cultural with the majority being either Peruvians or Orthodox Jewish. With textiles and cheap clothing being what the area is well known for, it is definitely an interesting combination to see bearded Jewish children walking amongst Peruvians carrying massive bolts of colourful fabric. Nothing is open on weekends or at night, so it’s the perfect breeding ground for little fuckers to walk around and cause trouble. There is even a main plaza, called Plaza Once, where I would never even dream of walking through it…. Never. Not any day or any time. I will walk close in order to get into the subway, but that’s about it.
A few blocks from where I lived in Once, I was with a friend, who is in a rather shady business himself, on the terrace of his house having some beers. He pointed over the edge and said “check out those three kids, they’re going to rob that car.” I thought… no way, it’s only 10:30pm, there are other cars, it’s parked under a light, and it definitely has an alarm. But, sure enough, with skilled precision and experience, those kids popped open the door, and stole everything from inside including the stereo system. This all happened in under a minute while the car alarm was going off. No one on the street or from their apartments did shit all, including myself. I just watched in awe as they worked like skilled professionals, stealing what they would otherwise never have. Within seconds, three motorcycles pulled up and picked up the kids getting away, then drove off without any issues.
That’s just talking about the neighbourhood, not even my apartment which ultimately ended up worse. I lived with two Argentine guys who are really cool and permanently stoned. I thought this would make life easy, but unfortunately, it just made my life really frustrating. I guess I’ll start a little venting session here, why not… but where to begin. Well, not even in my apartment, the elevator always smelled like one of three things: piss, cigarettes, or a mixture of both.
Okay, so the apartment itself was a decent size but way overpriced. Weekly cleaning services my ass, there was never one clean dish in the entire place AND they broke all of the glasses I brought from my other apartment. There was no front door handle, the laundry room was a disaster, the laundry machine electrocuted you unless you unplugged it before touching it, plastic lawn furniture, one old and falling-apart therapist couch, a caved in ceiling in the bathroom, and one mirror in the entire place. My room didn’t have any hangers or shelves, just holes in the wall, in which I stuck pens and pencils in order to hang things. The bathroom I had beside my room only had a functioning light half the day because it was timed for the pot plants growing in the ceiling and I had to flush the toilet by pulling a knob through a hole in the wall then dodging water squirting out from the pipes. The list goes on, endlessly, no lies.
Now, my roommates are next on the chopping block. Honestly really awesome guys, but just so useless. With their spirits permanently stuck with Bob Marley, they constantly ate my food and didn’t tell me about it or admit to eating my food. This includes leftover pizza in the fridge, which I bought, and then they ate an entire half of the pizza and when I confronted them about it they said “oh… I couldn’t remember if we bought that or not.” What the fuck. Then they were constantly cooking at ridiculous hours, whether it was 3am or noon. My room was right beside the kitchen and because of their obsession with fruit smoothies, they would use my blender and it would wake me up. Finally, one of the guys is a musician with no job and, ironically enough, is a huge slut. Impressively slutty, actually. He normally had a different girl every week, but then he went on a sort-of bender and the count was 9 girls in 6 days, which is enough for me to not bother introducing myself when I see them around the house. It wasn’t until the 9th random girl (out of 6 days) took a shower at 7:30am, ran around the house drunk, naked, and screaming some song lyrics, did I decide that I had enough. The entire house just eventually ended up smelling like a blend of mould, sweat, marijuana, and used whore. As I laid there in bed listening to her worthless existence, I put my foot down and decided that it is not fucking worth it. Even though I still had a paid week left in the month, within two days I lucked upon finding another place and moved out on the third day.
Did I ever luck out with the new place. It is a little far out, about 45min to get to downtown on public transpo, but damn is it ever worth it. It’s a house that has been newly renovated and the family is still in Italy, so their buddy is just renting it out for cheaper cheap in order to pay for utilities. It’s two floors with a rooftop terrace/grill, a garage, downstairs patio, and one other girl living with me. So far she’s really cool shit and there have been no problems at all, although, we will see! So I have my own room with a huge double closet, two single mattresses pushed together on the floor to make a double, en suite bathroom, and Capone of course. He’s gotten himself stuck twice in the trees that are in the downstairs patio… so much for cats being able to climb trees. I have never slept so well and it’s definitely a vast improvement over the previous apartment. I don’t have internet yet, but that’s also partially due to me being lazy and not calling the company to come in and install it. Ah well, it’s a good excuse to haul my ass into the city to get free wifi.
That’s been just my whirlwind apartment situation, I haven’t even touched on the whole employment aspect of my life. I think I’ll save that until next time, I’m all vented out right now.
Cuidate!
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